


On the Nesting Instinct

by TheCrazyGeek



Series: On a f*cking wing and a f*cking prayer [4]
Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: F/M, First Time, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mating Flight, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 21:13:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1177996
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCrazyGeek/pseuds/TheCrazyGeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malcolm is still the Alpha male in Whitehall. Grey-Winged and powerful. But one of his staff is now acting oddly and he has to find out why..</p>
            </blockquote>





	On the Nesting Instinct

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a solo work this one, although themasterplanner did do the editing. My thanks as always to She-Who-Edits-Like-The-Wind. :)

Malcolm Tucker, Director of Communications for the government of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, had been slumped in his chair, but he'd perked up a little when his personal assistant entered and locked the door behind her. "Fuck, I need this," he'd said. His suit jacket was already off and hanging neatly on a hanger over the curtain rail; he’d divested himself of his shirt a few minutes later. Spinning the chair around he straddled it and leant forward onto folded arms and gave a tiny shrug. "The wings need preening again."

Great grey wings erupted from his back and ruffled Sam's hair with the sudden breeze. It didn't last long; Malcolm was just too fucking tired to hold them up and they swiftly draped downwards to spread out on either side of his spine. Sam immediately grasped a cleaning cloth and the bottle of oil and started on the left wing, wiping away the obvious dirt and grime that one picked up from living in London – Winged or no.

The soft movement of her hands and her silent warm presence relaxed Malcolm like nothing else, and soon he found his mind just drifting with idle thoughts as she massaged the powerful flight muscles and cleaned and dusted and oiled and zipped his feathers until they shimmered like sheets of pounded silver foil. This ritual was so normal at the end of a busy week that he didn't immediately notice anything different. Then something started to impinge on his mind, something amiss, something _not quite right_.

Sam was spending a lot longer stroking his pinion feathers than usual; grasping them in her hands and pulling downwards like she did when cleaning but this, this was different. She was _lingering_. She was stroking him with the same movement and rhythm that she'd probably use on a man's--

\--oh god. Malcolm was momentarily off balance and, for once, had no fucking words to respond. She wasn't just cleaning him, no, this was a preening ritual. Nest-making. His nostrils dilated as he took a long breath in and then nearly kicked himself for not noticing it sooner.

Sam Cassidy, that blue-blood of the Winged who herself couldn't fly, was in heat.

And she wanted him.

***

Women of the Winged had very different fertility cycles than a Wingless _homo sapiens sapiens_ woman. The main difference was that they didn't have periods; a Winged female would be receptive for breeding ('in heat') at most once a year. It was common for the higher ranking Winged, the hereditary blue-blood rulers, to have less than 10 heat cycles in their entire lifetime.

That posed a problem.

The continuing degeneracy of their gene pool, combined with their low fertility rate, had led to a promising young girl from a good family being pledged to a commoner. A powerful one to be sure, but still without any aristocrat in him in the slightest. The pledge had only one clause; it only became official after the woman had conceived.

Being in heat wasn't something Malcolm or Jamie could experience, but they'd both seen it before in their culture.

***

Sam was showing the common initial signs. The fascination with her partner's wings as if she was sizing them up for a nest, her breathing getting deeper and heavier and that glorious heady scent of a fertile woman pouring over her.

He didn't know what exactly he should be doing. His body was screaming at him to just rip off their fucking clothes already and couple on the desk. _Come on,_ it seemed to say to him, _how often have you dealt with a female in heat?_

 _Never_ , thought Malcolm, but the rational thing to do is calm her down and suggest a long holiday. This isn't fucking Murray on the roof for fucks sake. But on the other hand, if he just did nothing, her libido would carry on to painful levels, she'd keep trying to mate and nest with him...or someone else.

And if someone else got Sam with child, his connection to her would be null and voided, denying him the connections he desperately needed among the Winged nobility. They'd had the finest Winged Genetics experts look Sam over and told her that although she lacked the gene to expand her wings, her offspring, if made with the right Winged, would not suffer the same fate. Christ, she might even go to Jamie if it got so bad. He'd have to kill the both of them.

Malcolm flicked his wing out of her grasp with a single elegant movement and spoke without turning. "Nesting?" Sam's hands stopped and she let out a soft breath.

"Malcolm. Shit, god I'm so sorry." her hands slumped onto her lap. "I, I don't know what I was thinking and--"

"--and did nobody in that fucking fancy estate ye grew up in bothered telling you about the facts of life?" She shrugged, basically saying that no, she'd never been taught. So Malcolm ran a hand over his mouth in exasperation and started talking, still slumped on the chair.

"Heat, it's nesting instinct yes? Ye want to find the one ye are promised tae or the most powerful Winged around and create a new life. Ye will get more and more desperate as ye go along, knickers fucking soaked and all that." A hand sneaked round his neck and he could feel Sam resting against him.

"Please?"  

He could only sigh. "Sam, ye didn't know what ye are after."

He was forced to admit to her that no, this wouldn't go away on its own. Her hands just would not stop touching him and damn him, but the idea was getting more tempting. "Sam, it's hormones pet, ye don't want me, ye just want any ranking Winged tae father a child on ye--"

Barely had he finished that sentence before she'd pushed him away from the chair, straddled him and started kissing him feverishly, her knickers damp with need and her nipples peaked to urgent points. _She's fucking desperate_ , he thought, but it didn't stop him kissing her back. She was so warm, so pretty and soft and willing...

Sam broke off and gasped for breath. "I want _you_ , Malcolm. Just you. If I can't have you then...I don't know, I guess I'll go spend a few evenings with a vibrator or something?" Despite the fact she was grinding herself onto him while saying this they both chuckled.

"Ahh love, it doesn't work like that sadly, although the mental image that I'm getting right now is fucking amazing." He kissed her nose. "You'll only lose the urges once you're Nesting."

"Nesting?"

 _Fuck, had her family told her nothing? Even_ he'd _managed to pick this shit up, and he'd been born to Wingless parents, for fucks sake._ "Breeding? Heavy? Fucking pregnant if ye want tae use a Wingless term. Knocked up, bun in the fucking oven, expectin’ --".

"I get the idea."

"So now ye know. The basics anyway. Birds and the fucking bees and why I'm not tossing ye onto the floor and giving you the rogering of your fucking life right now."

Sam looked distraught at this last sentence and Malcolm brushed the back of his knuckles across her cheek. "Look pet," he began, "between the general election, the upcoming reshuffle, and the finance scandals, I'm fucking shattered. Haven't even got the energy tae fuck a fleshlight, but--"

He paused, collecting thoughts and plans together and decided he did owe her some explanation. "--come on over on Saturday round dinnertime, yeah? I'll cook, ye wash up and I'll tell ye all the things that your useless chinless poncy family did'nae."

Sam smiled. "Not afraid of me jumping on you again in your own house, are you?"

To which Malcolm only shook his head. "Ye may _try_ to, love, but I'm stronger than ye are and I'll fucking tie ye to a chair if ye don't listen to me tomorrow. Deal?"

She sighed and nodded. It was going to be a long night ahead of her now though.

***

She’d been just about ready to throw Malcolm onto the floor and mount him when she arrived at his house on Saturday. He’d opened the door in a casual outfit, grey sweater and black jeans, and practically held her at arms length because her eyes were already dilating at the sight of him.

"Drink this," he’d ordered, as he thrust a cup of something red, warm and spicy at her and stood there tapping his feet until she’d drained it to the dregs. "Better." He took the empty mug back and stood aside to let her into the living room. By the time she reached the sofa her legs were feeling heavy and the damnable crawling itching craving she’d had for days was ebbing away. "What the hell did you just make me drink?"

Malcolm walked past her and into the kitchen and refused to answer. Soon he came back out with two plates heaped high with his famous curry and set the table.

Dinner was sedate, no wine ("Look, I JUST got ye fucking calmed down," he'd said.) and Sam wolfed down the food under Malcolm's curious gaze. She even asked for seconds.

"That should've calmed ye all down a lot, enough tae sit down and fucking   _listen_ tae me without tryin’ tae get my cock out every five fucking seconds." Malcolm finally explained the drink, the large amounts of food, his attitude as they wandered back into the living room – Malcolm remaining standing as Sam sank into the sofa – "The drink's an old Winged recipe with a modern twist. Designed to calm down a Breeding urge when it wouldn’t be convenient to act upon it, mixed with some Valium, ye should be able tae keep control of yerself for a few hours."

Sam opened her mouth but Malcolm answered her question before it was even asked. "I cannae drug ye the whole time, though, so don’t ask."

"But--"

He admitted, "There _are_ meds that'll stop this but even if I had them, they wouldn't start workin' fer a week anyway."

"And ye still know nothin' about your own culture. Jesus Christ."

***

She sat in fascinated silence for a long while as Malcolm spoke at length about going into Heat and Winged Politics and Courtship and Mating flights, punctuated by his usual usage of colourful imagery and iterations of the word "fuck". What he didn’t say, she noticed, was why he wasn’t prepared to just take her. _They were promised for fucks sake!_ He was halfway through a fairly graphic overview of a Mating flight when she decided she’d had enough.

"All very interesting, Malcolm, but doesn’t explain why you are treating me like a bloody _leper_." she finally accused him, jabbing the air in his direction with a long pointer finger. "You leap away from me, you hold me at arm's length, but we were _joined_ once, and you didn’t even break that arrangement when they found out I couldn’t fly. What's the deal? Am I fucking hideous?"

Malcolm’s jaw actually dropped for a second but he quickly recovered. "Hideous?" His voice softened. "Love, you’re a beautiful young clever thing who can just do so much better fer herself than an auld grey Glasgow barn owl who has been in more fights than fucking Tyson." He ignored her huff of disbelief and carried on with his talk.

Sam's family had never told her even half of this. When she was declared earth-bound, their attention had  shifted to her younger sister – Victoria. Victoria, with her great wings of deep bronze-flecked chestnut brown that matched her large, warm eyes; she'd mated with a fellow aristocrat and had two sons who were the pride and joy of the Cassidy family. _She'd_ had the education, the knowledge, the proper introductions into Winged culture.

Sam had just stayed promised to Malcolm, for the power he could bring to her old family, and encouraged to move out of home as soon as possible. Malcolm had given her a job as his personal assistant and brought her with him into politics.

Malcolm was talking still, but it was all becoming just a droning noise to her. Despite the drink Malcolm had given her to calm her down she still felt her hands twitching with the need to touch him. She was mentally begging him to show his wings off again, but they were currently hidden under his skin as he strode around the room explaining things to her. _Spread them out,_ her internal voice screamed, _cover me with them, let me lie on them, touch them!_

Malcolm paused in his speech and flicked an eye over to her. "Sam, ye're panting again. Stop it – it's like bein' in the room with a fuckin' Labrador."

That was it. She was up and pressing a finger into his chest within seconds.

"I _want_ you. I wanted you the _first_ time we met, but I kept it hidden like a good fucking dutiful blue-blood daughter should do and even more so when I couldn’t fly but they still wanted us to carry on paired for political reasons. I don't care about your age--"

"--but..." Malcolm tried to carry on. The great Malcolm Tucker, who always had a profane tirade at the ready, who could beat an ignorant politician or incompetent civil servant into compliance with words alone, had nothing to say. Nothing that could help, at any rate.

"--shut the fuck up, Malcolm. I'm going to say this and you can tie me to the bloody chair later, or kick me out of the house, or do whatever you need to do, _but I am going to say this._ " Sam ran her hands deliberately down her body, smoothing the fabric of her dress against her curves, noting how his piercing eyes tracked her every movement. "You've spent this evening telling me what being in Heat means, why we were paired in the first place and nothing you have said gives a reason for us not to do this. If you don’t want me, then at least have the fucking decency to say so, then I can stop bothering you and find someone else!"

"It's not that simple, love..." Malcolm grasped her hand in his and tried to pull her finger away from jabbing once more in his sternum.

"It is. You just don't want to admit it. Maybe I _will_ go find someone else, someone who will just give me what I want without a bloody lecture. I wonder what Jamie is up to tonight--"

"YOU ARE _MINE!_ " Malcolm bellowed, grasping her by the waist with deceptively strong hands before she could turn away. "You will NOT fuck with anyone else and especially NOT that fucking Motherwell twat. I'll kill ye both, I'll flay ye alive, I'll--"

Sam tilted her head whimsically and smiled. "I'm yours?"

"Oh to hell with it." Malcolm replied. He crushed her against his body and captured her lips with his own. He knew when he'd been beaten.

***

 _Finally,_ Sam sighed in relief as Malcolm's arms wrapped around her. Not having much knowledge in the details of Winged matings, she followed Malcolm's own lead. He kissed her slowly but deeply, his hands running up and down her back – _where my wings would have been_ – and she followed suit. Matching his rhythms, his actions.

He unfastened the clasps on her clothing, allowing her dress to fall to the floor, and he stopped and just looked.

"Fucking hell, I'm glad we're no' doing all that matin' flight shit. With you lookin' like that I'd have made crispy fried pigeon by slamming into a bloody pylon."

Sam's response was to smile at the compliment and then pull Malcolm's fleece off. His wiry body underneath wasn't a strange sight to her – she did groom him after all – but having it pressed up to her skin was something very different. It was a quirk of Winged biology that the incredibly powerful muscles needed to support the flight of a full-grown man's weight didn't overwhelm the upper body, instead laying dense and fiercely strong beneath the skin.

"Ye sure about this?" he asked. "I'll never take advantage of a woman and ye could just stay here fer the night--"

"I'm perfectly lucid, _thank you._ " Sam replied. Her hands snaked downward to his ass and practically wrenched him to her. "I want this. I want you."

"Good, jus' thought I'd check." He soon resumed the wanderings of his hands and moved his mouth down to kiss her cheek, her ear, her neck, her collarbone and then--

"God fucking Jesus!" Sam exclaimed. He was tonguing her breasts, biting her nipples through the fabric of her bra. She leaned back, giving him better access and unknowingly presenting her acceptance of Malcolm's domination.

Her bra and his trousers soon hit the floor and she tried to push him down onto it. "Let me ride you," she pleaded.

His answer was to grab her hand and pull her to the stairs and then up them to his bedroom. "I'm not eighteen anymore darlin,'" he explained. "I don't fuck on floors."

Malcolm's bedroom, like the rest of his house, was spacious, immaculate, tastefully decorated. Sam was pulled onto the enormous bed, piled with pillows and large enough to accommodate his wingspan.

On closer examination, Sam saw the pillows had all been stuffed with down feathers--jet black ones. _Jamie._

"Jesus Christ, Malcolm. You certainly weren't kidding about that."

"I'd have torn his fucking flight muscles out from under his skin, rolled them up, an' used them as my fucking shoelaces if he'd made one more fucking move on you," he snarled, and she didn't doubt it for a second. He was Alpha, his word was to be obeyed.

The rest of their clothes were thrown onto the floor and he kneeled back onto her legs. "Mine," he said with a tone of finality. A great gust of air knocked across Sam's naked figure as Malcolm's wings expanded in an explosion of grey feathers. He arched his back, holding them high and proud, and repeated, "Mine," every feather clearly visible as he stretched out to his full wingspan.

Even after years of preening him, Sam could never stop feeling a bit awestruck at Malcolm Tucker's wings--immense and gleaming, a soft and almost silvery dove grey, gentle and utterly exquisite in their silky perfection, and so incongruous with his reputation as Mad Dog McFuck, the Gorbals Goebbels.

Sam didn't say a word, she didn't need to, she simply raised herself up enough to brush her hands against those silken grey feathers. He withstood this for a few seconds, muscles trembling from holding out nine-foot-long wings, and then dived forward, pushing her down like a hawk spotting his prey.

"Mine. You are _mine_."

His wings beat a strong downward movement and lifted him upwards a tiny amount, enough for him to position himself perfectly, then they settled in a flurry of movement to lie on the bed, still fluttering. He kissed her again and her hands were all over him. Stroking, pulling, clenching at any part she could reach. She clawed down his back between his wings and he growled.

Malcolm had slept with a lot of people; he'd be the first to admit it, but this was somehow different. It wasn't the infighting in his mind of _you're not ready for a baby, neither of you are_ and _she's in heat, she wants you, for gods sake just fuck her already_ because he was quite capable of ignoring his own conscience when it suited him. No, this was better. He was harder, stronger, filled with energy – he almost felt like he was twenty again – and fascinated with every last part of his Mate's body.

Mate. His. Forever.

Sam keened with need when Malcolm moved his head down and started placing small bites on her neck and shoulders. She wrapped her legs around his thighs and awkwardly grinded her hips upwards, trying to move things along faster – despite all the meds from earlier her need to come was just as unbearable as ever. Malcolm reacted by biting deeper into her skin, marking her.

"Yes?" he asked, raising his head. "Oh fucking god please," she replied, and cried out as he slid into her for the first time.

The great grey wings rose from the bed as he started to move in and out of her, in a clear display of dominance; she was his, no other male can come near.

He returned his teeth to her neck and grunted with the effort of keeping pace with her upward thrusts and holding his wings up, but he didn't care. This felt far too fucking good. Sam was slick, hot and receptive and he moaned with his need to come in her. Instinct drove him. Told him to make her come first so she'd be more open to his seed.

Malcolm rose up on his arms and thrusted even deeper into her. To help her along -- _although she does'nae need it much_ \-- he began to circle his hips while moving in and out of her so his pelvis rolled over her clit and made her do some seriously erotic moaning. When he lifted one hand off the bed and stroked down to her abdomen, she almost got up to porn star levels.

"Here," Malcolm gasped in between frantic breaths, "here is where I'll claim ye." His hand moved back and forth over her flat stomach. "Here is where I'm going tae fill ye, where our child will grow in ye."

A child with Sam's dark hair, perhaps, or Malcolm's grey eyes, and endowed with the dove-grey wings of its father, gorgeous plumage that would bring honor to the Cassidy flock.

Those last words bolted across Sam's spirit and within seconds she was twisting and yelping and then finally letting out a piercing cry as her body crashed over into orgasm, hands twisting into damp sheets and holding on for dear life. Malcolm wasn't too far behind, this whole evening had been fucking foreplay, and he thrust even deeper into her and amid a whispered _"oh god oh fuck"_ from him, he came.

It wasn't like any other orgasm he'd had with others or with himself. His cock violently spurted its load into her and he moaned through gritted teeth as it didn't seem to want to stop. When it finally did stop, he collapsed on top of Sam, still joined to her, his pulse racing as fast as hers.

They lay there in satisfied bliss for a few minutes, and then something unusual happened.

Malcolm muttered something next to her ear.

"What is it?" Sam asked.

"Oh fuck, oh cunting fuck!" he replied louder. "This, this is fucking new tae me!"

"Malcolm, what are you on about?"

"My _cock_ , sweetheart. It wants tae come again." He started up his pace again and braced himself against this totally new sensation. _Got tae fill her_ , his instincts cried, _make sure no other fucking man can even get close tae her._

Sam nodded, eager to mate again. The arresting beauty of her Mate struck her anew. That body -- whipcord lean and deceptively strong; his hands those of an artist, elegant and fine-boned. Eyes and hair that spoke of stormy skies and silver. Sleek predator's wings that could take him above the clouds in an unrivalled burst of speed and a mind as lethally sharp as a blade.

He roughly pushed his mate's thighs apart and took her again with a hard, hot thrust that burned exquisitely through flesh already flushed and swollen from the force of the first orgasm. This pleasure wasn't like anything Sam had felt before; it was dark and primal and visceral, deeply _uncivilized_. It curled her toes, made her breasts swell and her nipples peak, made the flesh between her legs flush and her heart pound.

His orgasm this time was more strained and powerful and Sam stroked the side of his face in wonder as he settled back down. She was just stroking his soft wings to make him relax when he spewed out a creative barrage of swearing and rose up again. "Fuck ye're going tae fucking kill me," he muttered, not in hate, as he felt his cock firm up for the third time that evening.

For the third time in a night Sam felt the violent rush of Malcolm's own pleasure, heard her alpha male's powerful wings snap wide above her as the muscles in his back flexed and bunched.

In the end he came four powerful times, sweat dripping off his forehead and having made Sam scream with her orgasms at least three. _Perfect mate_ , he thought as he settled those grey wings around them both. _Fucking hell_ , was his next realization, _he'd have tae do this to her again_. Likely quite a few times, Winged fertility rates being lower than a fucking depressed limbo champion. But that was for another day, this was now, and now he wanted nothing more than to envelop them both in a soft grey cocoon of his wings and doze off. He wasn't eighteen anymore, after all.

***

Curled up against Malcolm's side, head on his chest and her hand idly stroking his down feathers, Sam sighed in relief. The horrible skin-crawling, itching feeling was gone, she wasn't craving sex as much.

A thought occurred to her. "Malcolm," she said, rising up from his arms, "are we bonded now?"

He pulled her back down again, this time draping a wing over and then sniffed at her. She still carried that irresistible honey-glaze scent of a fertile woman in heat, but it was far less pronounced. "No, love," he explained. "Ye're not with child." He took another long deep breath of her scent, savouring the various tastes that made up Sam. White lace, a gentle rain on a warm rock, and the distant roar of the sea, but absolutely none of the unique smell that a breeding Winged would have.

"I thought..."

"That we'd mate once and ye'd get knocked up at first time?" Malcolm finished for her. "It's not like that. All that fuckery I told ye about matin' flights -- being chased through the skies by your partner -- is more than just fucking tradition." He hugged her tighter against him. "We'll just have to keep fucking trying, then, won't we? I'm sure ye won't object."

She laughed and snuggled into his chest.

"Sam?"

"Yes, Malcolm?"

"Ya know, I'm going tae need preening again. I look like I've flown through a fucking hurricane."

  
  



End file.
